Users of online social networking systems often use such systems to transmit messages to other users and to post content to such systems for sharing with other users. For example, the Facebook social networking system provides each registered user of the system with a personal page, referred to by terms such as “wall” and “timeline,” which displays a variety of information, such as personal information about the user, content posted by the user, and content posted by other users within the user's network on Facebook.
One of the primary goals of Facebook and other social networking systems is to facilitate the sharing of a wide variety of content among users in a wide variety of ways. One of the original reasons that users began using social networking systems was that they provided a convenient, user-friendly, easy way to engage in such content sharing, without requiring users to have knowledge of HTML or web programming, and without requiring users to visit different sites or use different mechanisms to share different kinds of content with other users.
For example, if a user of Facebook views content on any web site that the user wishes to share with other Facebook users, such as an article, a photograph or photo gallery, or an online coupon or promotion, the user may share a link to the content with other users. When the sharing user uses Facebook to share the link, Facebook gathers and generates information about the link that is shared, by analyzing the web page at the link address (URL), including images from the page located at that address, and a summary of that page. When recipients of the shared link view the link in Facebook, Facebook displays the link and some or all of the associated information, such as the associated image and summary. This provides more information to the receiving user than would be provided by a bare URL, thereby enabling the receiving user to understand the context and meaning of the linked information more easily than if a mere bare URL had been displayed. Furthermore, the presentation of an image and summary acts as a preview of the linked web page, and influences the receiving user's decision about whether it is worthwhile to navigate to the shared link. The preview has a substantial impact on the click-through rate (CTR) of the link, and as a result, the preview may have a direct commercial impact on the web content being linked. Facebook determines what to present in the preview by applying certain rules and algorithms on the linked web page. Because this preview is statically determined by the content of the linked page and private algorithms determined by Facebook, customizing the preview based on business goals or dynamically based on the targeted audience may be impractical or impossible. While this example refers to Facebook, Twitter and other social networks treat shared links in a similar way. The proprietary and confidential algorithms each social network applies to generate previews of linked content vary, adding to the difficulty of customizing previews of linked content.
What is needed, therefore, are improved techniques for sharing content in online social networking systems.